with a loud buzz alighted on her cheek.  She hit at it again and hurt herself, while it skimmed gracefully away.  She lost her temper, and sat up in bed and waited, watching to hit at it and kill it.  She kept on hitting at it at last with fury and with all her strength, as if it were a real enemy deliberately trying to madden her; and it elegantly skimmed in and out of her blows, not even angry, to be back again the next instant.  It succeeded every time in getting on to her face, and was quite indifferent how often it was driven away.  That was why she had dressed and come out so early.  Francesca had already been told to put a net over her bed, for she was not going to allow herself to be annoyed twice like that.  People were exactly like flies.  She wished there were nets for keeping them off too.  She hit at them with words and frowns, and like the fly they slipped between her blows and were untouched.  Worse than the fly, they seemed unaware that she had even tried to hit them.  The fly at least did for a moment go away.  With human beings the only way to get rid of them was to go away herself.  That was what, so tired, she had done this April; and having got here, having got close up to the details of life at San Salvatore, it appeared that here, too, she was not to be let alone.

Viewed from London there had seemed to be no details.  San Salvatore from there seemed to be an empty, a delicious blank.  Yet, after only twenty-four hours of it, she was discovering that it was not a blank at all, and that she was having to ward off as actively as ever.  Already she had been much stuck to.  Mrs. Fisher had stuck nearly the whole of the day before, and this morning there had been no peace, not ten minutes uninterruptedly alone.

Costanza of course had finally to go because she had to cook, but hardly had she gone before Domenico came.  He came to water and tie up.  That was natural, since he was the gardener, but he watered and tied up all the things that were nearest to her; he hovered closer and closer; he watered to excess; he tied plants that were as straight and steady as arrows.  Well, at least he was a man, and therefore not quite so annoying, and his smiling good-morning was received with an answering smile; upon which Domenico forgot his family, his wife, his mother, his grown-up children and all his duties, and only wanted to kiss the young lady’s feet.

He could not do that, unfortunately, but he could talk while he worked, and talk he did; voluminously; pouring out every kind of information, illustrating what he said with gestures so lively that he had to put down the watering-pot, and thus delay the end of the watering.

Lady Caroline bore it for a time but presently was unable to bear it, and as he would not go, and she could not tell him to, seeing that he was engaged in his proper work, once again it was she who had to.